CASANOVA, COME BACK!

A Comedy

The modern Casanova longs to settle down with one woman, but she resists him.

He’s coming to the University of Leeds to give a poetry reading and speak to a few classes…

…and the girls are sort of interested!

The great lover's great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson—

(You
didn’t know he was secretly married? It happened in England—a nun who
had already taken her vows, the Mother Superior outraged, powerful
people to please…)

—has
the same name, the same weakness for women (and they for him, or at
least for his reputation), sports the same drag and is a so-so poet on
the campus circuit.

How can he get steady work as a teacher when trouble dogs him everywhere! No one takes him seriously except as a—Except as a—

So when he arrives in Leeds he announces that he’s impotent.

Ah, but he’s played here before, and now his past rises up to confront him.

Proposed cast: Simon Pegg (Casanova)

GIACOMO
CASANOVA (“Just make it Jack”) takes advantage of his ancestor’s
reputation to spice up his act as a performing poet with
eighteenth-century costume, and it works on the ladies. But what he
needs is a steady job, and a life.

Proposed cast: Anna Friel (Henrietta)

He
doesn’t remember her but some years earlier he had played Leeds and
it had worked on HENRIETTA PASTORLY, now a lecturer here with a young
son who speaks a private language—one that only Casanova can speak with
him. Could it be…

Proposed cast: Donald Sutherland (the ghost)

The
GHOST of the original Casanova haunts his
great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson, criticizes his
choices and kibitzes the action. No one else can see him and sometimes
Casanova almost thinks he’s real.

Proposed cast: Emma Thompson (Deborah)

Chairwoman
DEBORAH BLAKE, the no-nonsense head of the Leeds English Department,
can’t help but be intrigued by Casanova’s reputation. Or is it
excited? Or is it, as her husband suspects, in love?

Proposed cast: Dianna Rigg (Cissy)

LADY
CISSY SNABE, a benefactress of the University, falls from a dangerous
height into Casanova’s gallant arms, much to everyone’s relief. She’s
beyond suspicion in such matters, but who is that mysterious visitor at her bedroom window?

Proposed cast: Alan Rickman (Rafe)

DEAN
RAFE HARWICK’s wife and underage daughter are both in erotic trances
over the arrival on campus of Casanova–and so, it turns out, is the
Dean!

Attached:

And
the seventh character is the University of Leeds. Hell for some; heaven for others—like Jack,
who could live happily ever after here as a simple lecturer.